Subway stations we love and the ones we hate

The J and Z's Chamber Street stop is one that many vote as their least favorite in the system. (Photo by flickr user ciamabue)

A few weeks ago, my work offices moved from the Grand Central area to Times Square, and my morning commute shifted as well. Instead of exiting the East Side IRT through the southern bowels of the ugly 42nd St. stop, the end of my morning commute involves a walk over the platforms that connect the Shuttle at Times Square — the original IRT 42nd St. stop — to the West Side line. The Track 4 platform continues to the north, and a small area of the original platform remains unused.

Despite the hustle and bustle of that Times Square station, seemingly at all hours of the day and night, it’s one of my favorite in the system for its history and complexities. It’s a labyrinth of passageways that stretch from 44th St. and 8th Ave. to 40th and Broadway. It connects the IND, the BMT and the IRT lines at the center of the city, and it features a great vantage point for watching the West Side IRT trains stream past the shuttle platform and into and out of its station.

For every Times Square, though, there’s a Chambers St. underneath 1 Centre St. For every well-maintained and recently-renovated station, there’s an equally dingy one that needs more than just a little TLC. Unfortunately, decades of deferred maintenance means those in need of attention far outnumber those that look passably well maintained.

In my neck of the woods, for instance, Grand Army Plaza is the only station in good shape. The two 7th Ave. stations — one at 9th St. and one at Flatbush — need work, and the Union St. stop at 4th Ave. just is. It’s not in awful shape, but it’s not particularly nice. That’s the public perception of our vast and vital subway system.

Last week, I posed a random question to my Twitter followers: “What’s your least favorite subway stop?” The answers were creative. Let’s look at a sampling.

I posted the same question on Facebook and received a similarly varied response. Of course, a few stations stick out. The West 4th St. stop is generally in terrible shape, and the lower level platforms are indeed hot and smelly during the summer. Canal St., despite a recent renovation, shows the wear and tear of constant use and abuse. The Chambers St. and Bowery stations along the BMT Nassau Line are creepy and decaying. The unused set of tracks at Canal St. and the Bowery add to the seediness of it all.

These stations are the public faces of the subway system. It’s what daily straphangers live with and walk through every day during their commutes, and it’s how tourists come to view the New York City subway system. It’s a seemingly impossible task, with money tight and time working against it, to keep the system looking clean, but so much of it is in bad shape. Without the political support, it won’t get better, and we’ll be left with only a glimpse of the history and progress at crown-jewel stations while the rest of the system suffers.

While in this post, I’ve highlighted a few responses to my query, I’d love to hear more. Feel free to chime in with your least favorite subway station (or your favorite, for that matter). We all have our various reasons for liking and hating some of those 468 stops out there.

70 Responses to “Subway stations we love and the ones we hate”

72nd St on the 1/2/3 is a death trap. The platforms are incredibly narrow, and it’s amazing more people aren’t killed. 96th St on the same line is just incredibly hot in the summer and cold in the winter.

The thing is, 72nd Street is so much better since they renovated it and added the second entrance and made it possible to change over from the uptown to the downtown side. At this point, I wouldn’t call it the worst, though it still does kinda suck….

Has anyone been killed? Really, now. The platforms and staircases are too narrow, but people manage. I think Ben was referring to poorly maintained stations, not poorly designed ones. Chambers St. on the J/Z is fixable. 72nd St. on the 1/2/3 is what it is.

In addition to at least one death this month several people have been struck by trains at 72nd in the past month. I think there were 3 in one weekend. If you want to talk narrow platforms, though, the northern end of the Central Park North-110th St stop on the 7th Ave line is even worse. Still, those are design flaws since both stations are relatively well-maintained.

The Chambers Street J/ Z station is my most favorite station in the city. Its like being in the catacombs of some city that is falling into ruin. You can wait for the train and dream what it would be like if it was fixed up, but of course if it was fixed up the result would be disappointing. Also navigating the transfer to the kept up City Hall station where the 4,5, and 6 is located is not bad.

And I try to avoid the Times Square/ 42nd Street station, too many people rushing about, though given what it is I think they handle the traffic circulation issues pretty well.

The Lexington Avenue station at 59th Street is pretty bad, since it is a jerry rigged assembly of three separate stations, one for the 6, one for the 4 and 5, and one for the N, R, Q and whatever other letter the MTA is using on that line. Then you have the non-connected connection to the F, which I’ll omit. Everything is connected by a few narrow stairwells, where you are either waiting to let an oncoming wave of people exiting a train to pass before you can access where you want to go, or you are stuck behind some person barely in good enough shape to be using the stairs (there is almost no accessibility for the disabled at that station at all. And its easier, and takes the same time, to just take the 6 to 42nd Street or 86th Street and transfer to the 4/5 there, but not everyone knows that). Add in the too narrow platform on the N/R/Q, and the crowds of tourists and shoppers that often stand around the entrances to the stations, making just getting into the station difficult. But the onrushing wind when trains arrive from Queens is cool, and I like the tile color schemes around the escalators to the N and R, the one concession thrown to the disabled. Other good points are the entrance directly into Bloomingdales, and the Subway bar right above one of the entrances.

But the collection of stations around Fulton Street are probably worse.

I agree with both your points. Chambers Street is quite frankly a majestic station that has been left to rot. There simply is no other station like it in the system and with some serious TLC, this station could restored to its former glory. I take the J/Z up to Canal rather than the 6 just to walk around the station and see whats left of its mezzanine as well as all the other features that have been left to decay or poorly altered. I work in One Centre street and have had the opportunity to go into the abandoned northern half of the original mezzanine as well. This station was engineered to be a serious downtown hub and it saddens me to see what it has become because stations simply will never be built again with such grandeur. Perhaps if the SAS ever makes it downtown that far the station might see a resurgence. I also had the idea of tearing down the hideous wall that went up in the 60’s when they destroyed the western local platform just so you can see the IRT platforms from the BMT. I think that would be pretty cool

I also agree on your observation at 59th/Lex. The N/Q/R platform is just not adequate for the crowds and rather than transfer, i take the Broadway BMT all the way downtown because i feel sometime like i’ll be pushed off the platform from all the crowding (wonder if the MTA could ever expand the station out a bit to make the platform wider albeit at the expense of the original mosaic wall tiling)

I disagree with both of you. The Chambers Street station does look nice, but the MTA’s maintenance of the station look like a collapsing building. It is ugly on the west platforms, sweaty at all times, and full of rat holes. It is more dangerous during the rush hours than at the Grand Central or the Fourteenth Street Stations. It is the direct opposite of the 59th street station which can be considered quite beautiful.

More dangerous during rush hour? How so? I’m there every evening and if anything, crowding doesnt seem to be a problem.At all. Where as 59th it clearly is.

59th is quite beautiful? How so? Seems to me its a standard island platform with the only originality of its construction left over to be the mosaics (i speak only of the N/Q platform). Chambers street looks the way it does because its abandoned since the 1930’s (MTA even has gone as far as not bother replacing the tiles and just putting some quick cement in their place).

I actually like Chanbers St J/Z station also. It is a wonderful ruin that could have been used in ” Escape from New York ” . I wonder if there are any good photos from when it was in its prime.

The Hoyt / Schwrmerhrn A/C/G station is in better shape, but it is also vast, with platforms no longer used. I wonder if it was ever fully used.

I don’t like De Kalb, and Pacific/ Atlantic is a painful station to make transfers in. Just brutal, with many stairs on the R N D platforms, a slog down a narrow crowded corridor only to face many more stairs. Hate it.

The Concourse Line (minus the renovated 161st Street) seems to be unfairly overlooked in comparisons of the subway’s “worst.” There’s the endless mezzanines that are only half-open, the closed entrances and staircases, the patchwork tile jobs, the burnt out lights, the almost 80 years of grime that seems to cover every corner. A real disaster.

Pretty much every station on the 1, 2, 4, and D in the Bronx that isn’t a) a high-volume station or b) a major transfer point is decaying and decrepit. For every 161st Street on the D and 4, and 231st on the 1, and 233rd on the 2, there dozens of 207th Streets, Intervale Avenues, Jackson Avenues, Tremont Avenues, and so on. As Walter said above, the D stations in the Bronx are the worst.

All of the crap stations in the Boogie-Down are in neighborhoods that are predominantly inhabited by nonwhites. But of course that’s a total coincidence…..

Fair point, but the predominantly white and Asian riders of the N train in south Brooklyn and predominantly white riders of the F train in Prospect Park and south Brooklyn would like to remind you that those stations are also in awful condition.

A useful analysis would show some kind of graph, with popularity on one axis and decrepitude on the other.

W. 4th Street is a very popular station, and it’s in an area that sees many out-of-town visitors. You would want that station to be one of the subway system’s crown jewels.

Bowery on the J/Z has long been one of the least used stations in Manhattan. I’m sure it will be fixed eventually, but if they have to set priorities (as they clearly do), it would have to rate lower.

I also think you need to distinguish fixable and unfixable problems. There is nothing that can be realistically done about the depth or the platform widths at Court Street on the R. Bowery and Chambers Street on the J/Z could be cleaned up and beautified, whenever they find the money to do it.

What standards of decrepitude would you use? I’d try to put something together for the top 10 or 20 highest trafficked stations if we could come up with some fairly reasonable and somewhat objective standards.

From a safety/functionality standpoint, the downtown entrance at 51st Street on the 6 is in there during heavy rainstorms. I don’t think the Canadian side of Niagara Falls carries as much water per minute over it’s side as the short-but-wide set of stairs from the turnstiles down to the platform level does during major rains. Beautiful to look at from the uptown platform, but still…

I’ve been there during a downpour and actually, it can be quite unnerving. There have been occasions that the train was delayed or stopped because the water accumulated faster than it could drain and came too close to the third rail. However, it is a feat of construction that the water drains away as fast as it does because it does look like Niagara at times LOL!

The bad:
— I absolutely hate Lexington Avenue on the 53rd Street tube. It’s cramped and impossible to get out of quickly. The place scares me.
— All the stations on the Archer Avenue extension are badly built and ugly.
— What they did to Bowling Green is a travesty.
— Chambers Street on the IND: Those disembodied eyes that they installed as “art” are incredibly creepy.

Favorite stations include:
— Chambers Street on the Nassau Loop (I love the structure itself and the history of the place, though I’m as appalled as anyone by its condition)
— Coney Island
— Queensboro Plaza for the views of the city and of the els snaking in and out at both ends (honorable mention to the Eastern Parkway-Broadway Junction complex)
— 33rd Street on the East Side IRT, which got as good a renovation as you could hope for and just looks terrific.

That’s because the N/Q station at Canal was a semi-afterthought (somewhat like the Jay street platform on the R), which resulted in space constraints at the bridge bound platforms and plenty of unused infrastructure (express tracks and lower level) at the R station and City Hall.

i’ll second that West 4th Street is seriously in need of some work. *especially* in light of it being so heavily trafficked…. why has the MTA let this station get to the way it is? the tiles that aren’t caked in grime seemed to have shimmied off the walls, and the hatchet-job replacement of sections of the color band tiles on both levels is a disservice to the clean-line aesthetics of IND design. (and it is interminably hot in the summer…. i try to avoid it and Braodway/Lafayette altogether once the temperature goes up outside)

other stations in serious states of decrepitude: 21st/Van Alst and Broadway on the G. for some reason, it seems 1930s civil engineers decided to put these stations in the middle of an underground reservoir or something…. Broadway practically has a rushing river running down *both* tracks, and the walls of both stations have quite a degree of water damage. is it impossible to waterproof these stations after the fact?

I’m surprised no one has mentioned any of the G stations. Closed mezzanines & entrances (the Nostrand side at Bedford-Nostrand is great for that), and completely decrepit stations made even worse by the fact that the trains are only half length. I like to walk down those platforms if I miss a train and have time…it feels like no one has been to the northern half of the Broadway station (who wasn’t trying to sneak into S 4th street) or the southern half of the Metropolitan station in decades.

the southern end of the 21st/Van Alst station is actually scary…. the floor hasn’t been cleaned in decades (likely), tiles from the walls lay in broken piles on the tracks, and the only sound comes from the hum of the fluorsecent lights.

does anybody know when/why the Grand Street exit at Metropolitan Avenue was closed? have there been talks about re-opening it given the recent explosion in ridership at Metroplitan *and* all the bars and restaurants lining up on Grand? i imagine it wouldn’t be hard to do (and certainly easier than building a new exit, as they would have to when they bandy about opening an Avenue A exit at 1st Avenue on the L).

I too would like to hear more about the Grand St entrance of the Metropolitan G station. I’ve seen the entrance listed on older maps, but don’t know much else about it. Are they really thinking of reopening it?

the 21st/van alst was the first station i thought of when i started reading these comments. i feel like i need a tetanus shot every time i have to use it. adding to the creepiness of the place is the fact that 21st st has not been called van alst in about a million years.

East Broadway is another station in a bad state of decay. The platforms and stairs are really dirty, lots of tiles are missing from the walls, and those same walls have orange-brown trails left by leaking water (and who knows what else).

The downtown platform at 5th Avenue/53rd Street is in reasonably good shape, and I like the Arts for Transit display showing information about the museum of Television and Radio (now the Paley Center), original plans for Riverside South, etc., but the ceiling and track wall are in bad shape with peeling paint, dirty leak trails, and something I can only describe as resembling a goiter where leaking water has caused the walls to swell up.

On the positive side, the Queensboro Plaza N,7 stop has a great, classic New York feel to it, and I’m looking forward to the design of the new SAS stations and 7 line station at 34th/11th. The design being used there looks like it has taken cues from the fantastic, timeless design of the lower level at Grand Central Terminal.

Despite the hustle and bustle of that Times Square station, seemingly at all hours of the day and night, it’s one of my favorite in the system for its history and complexities.

Ironically the thing I hate most about Times Square is that while it has so many entrances, it seems like basically half (or more?) are closed after certain hours and I’m always running around between them trying to find one that’s open if I’m trying to get down there late at night. Is there a listing of station entrances and what hours they’re open anywhere? For New York’s supposed “24 hour” neighborhood the subway station isn’t very accessible at night.

There are also a million other things wrong with the station, including the fact that while the MTA is apparently opposed to those Mexican “Norteno” players with guitars on the train, they sanction loud amplified annoying musicians and performers drawing huge crowds of tourists smack dab in the middle of the path between the 1/2/3 and the N/Q/R? That needs to be rescinded as a spot where that’s permitted.

I agree with both points. I used to work on 40th Street in the area, and if I worked late would usually just walk home instead of trying to find an entrance that was both actually open, and not mobbed by tourists and performers.

Among the ugliest stations are 21 St on the G in Queens, Jackson Heights in 74 St,Queens (because of the horrendous-looking renovations), 4 Ave on the F/G in Brooklyn, the W 4 St in Manhattan, and Chambers Street on the J in Manhattan. Definitely NOT the Times Square station, or the 57 St and 6 av, or Lex Ave and 53 St on the E/M. Most of the stations that were built during the Cold War era look ugly anyway. The Chambers Street station looks like a dirty toilet in Africa, it is ugly NOW even if it was grand and majestic in the early 1900s. Also the 72 Street station is claustrophobically narrow.

I lived in Queens a while back, so things may have changed, but at that time, I disliked the Queens Plaza Station which always seemed claustrophobic and uncomfortable. Maybe that was in contrast to the N stations I would normally use, on the elevated, outdoor section. As for favorite, I always loved Union Square, for its complexity and activity and for my feeling of achievement when I finally learned my way around it.

The 7 stations past 82 Street-Jackson Heights are pretty disgusting and have a lot of peeling paint. It feels as though the entire structure is going to collapse when you’re waiting for a train. In fact, I think most elevated stations in outer Queens (Jamaica Avenue, Liberty Avenue, Rockaways) are in horrible disrepair.

And to echo everyone else, yes, the Broadway G is by far the most disgusting station besides Chambers St J. Although, there is one thing I really love about it. It’s always a very comfortable 55 or so degrees in there, even during the warmer months. I don’t mind waiting for the G there so much because of that.

I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Columbus Circle. It doesn’t look bad, but it’s poorly designed and I can never figure out where the hell to exit.

I have a love/hate relationship with Times Sq as I’m sure most New Yorkers do. They did the best with it they could but it’s still kind of a mess–but so many lines go through there that most people could probably draw a map of it.

116th on the 1 – small, but does what it’s supposed to do, and also offers an underpass in case you’re walking and have a red light crossing Broadway.

The 7 on QB – not for the in-station design, but for how well they integrate viaducts with the street. It turns out that els and very wide streets work better together than each works along.

Bad:

Atlantic-Pacific – a labyrinth with exits that aren’t where you want to go. The Pacific Street side requires you to exit on Pacific, with no easy way to get to Atlantic and 4th.

72nd on the 1/2/3 – searing hot platforms. The only redeeming feature is that you can watch the trains arrive from the headhouse, so you don’t need to wait on the platform, but instead could wait upstairs and make a run for it when the trains come.

Times Square – more useful than Atlantic-Pacific, but the signage blows and it took me years to learn the optimal passageways. As a redeeming feature, there are the people distributing Chick Tracts. (At a time of rising religious fundamentalism, I like reading stories in which atheism is everywhere and Christians are a minority.)

I’ve read some history on this: They were trying to prevent express-local transfers (such as happen at most two-platform four-track stations) from happening at Penn Station, given the number of people expected to get on and off there.

If the MTA ever renovated Chambers St., it could be a very grand space considering its scale. But that is unlikely. West 4th should really be bumped up on the priority list considering the volume of people it handles, its location, tourist traffic, etc. It seems it was missed when other large IND hubs got their renovations (14th/8th is actually one of the best). West 4th is truly the nexus of the IND since it is where the 8th Avenue and 6th Avenue lines come together.

Admittedly I do not use the J/Z downtown that much, but it perplexes me that they left a station under the Municipal Building and across the street from City Hall reach the state it has. I did a photo essay on it for Forgotten NY in 2002 or so and it hasn’t been touched in the decade since and probably long before that.

I agree with 72nd on the IRT Broadway/7th Ave being searing hot, 96th can also join it, because man does that thing fry in the summer.

190th Street – Overlook Terrace on the A could use a facelift underground and aboveground, considering its entrance is grand, but falling spart slowly.

East 143rd – St. Mary’s Street on the 6 – I love this station from an obscure person’s perspective, but damn does it feel like you’re in an icebox in there, with the leaks everywhere and how dim it is. The tiles are falling apart left and right. Just an absolutely dismal sight.

So, plenty of comments on the worst stations and factors that make them qualified as such…

But what of the best? I really can’t think of any that are particularly great, especially in the sense that GCT is a great train station, anyway.

I agree with your opinions of Times Square – it is an underground labyrinth with many interesting features (although, still not especially ‘nice’)

Columbus Circle is much more pleasant now, I can see the potential starting to emerge at Fulton St, and 14th Street is another with (usually) something interesting to see while making connections at almost any time of day

But I still can’t think of any that qualify as ‘a sight to see’ along the lines of the old City Hall station.

I’m always secretly hoping to hear the likes of, “Wow, you should really go see what they’ve done with the new Cortland St station!”

The greatest possibility for modern subway design may lie in the new 7 line station on the west side or the SAS stations, if they do truly open this decade